Conventional anticancer drugs are introduced into various metabolic pathways of cells in which division is actively progressing, and most of them exhibit anticancer activity by inhibiting synthesis of a nucleic acid or generating cytotoxicity. However, the drugs did not selectively act only on cancer cells, but also damaged normal cells, particularly those of tissues that were actively dividing, resulting in serious side effects such as nausea, gastroenteric trouble, alopecia, leukopenia caused by myelosuppression, etc.
Accordingly, recently, various studies for developing an anticancer drug having a targeting property that can minimize damage to normal cells are progressing. According to the progress of such studies, studies on the development of various targeting anticancer drugs such as a manual targeting method in which an anticancer drug is accumulated only in cancer cells having abnormal blood vessels, the development of an anticancer drug using siRNA inhibiting expression of a specific gene, and the development of an anticancer drug using various peptides or nucleic acid aptamers binding to specific cancer cells are actively progressing. However, such targeting anticancer drugs still have problems in terms of low anticancer effects, low targeting properties, and complicated preparation methods.
Meanwhile, since a cancer is a complicated disease in which various mechanisms operate, and thus is unlikely to be completely cured using only one method such as chemotherapy using anticancer drugs or radiotherapy, recently, attention to anticancer treatment through integrating various treatments is increasing. However, there is a still lack of studies on multifunctional anticancer drugs.
For such effective anticancer treatment, there is a demand for the development of a multifunctional anticancer drug having a high targeting property, a high anticancer effect and an easy preparation method.